Project Funded to Better Utilize Information in Texas Schools

Photo: Texas State Capitol in Austin

When the Texas Legislature passed HB 1 in 2006 and approved related appropriations in 2007, it agreed to completely overhaul the Texas Education Agency's (TEA's) largest data collection system, the Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS). The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, made more than $80 million in education-related grants in Texas to date, today announced a planning grant to help the TEA roadmap PEIMS upgrades that will make the system's student data more transparent and actionable, more flexible to accommodate new metrics, and easier to collect and disseminate to districts and education stakeholders statewide.

The PEIMS collection and database system collects data the Legislature and the TEA use to oversee public education, including student demographic data and academic performance, personnel, financial and organizational data for all the districts in Texas. However, the existing application is outdated. A 2002 study conducted by the Legislature revealed challenges in PEIMS' data collection, reporting and quality. To complement the passage of HB 1 and the $4.8 million appropriated by the Legislature to upgrade the hardware infrastructure, the Dell family foundation's latest $750,000 grant will fund a detailed plan to ensure TEA's upgrade includes performance management systems that provide Texas schools with actionable insight into what's working and what's not.

"This project has the potential to have a significant impact on Texas' ability to make decisions that ultimately affect the performance of its students, so we welcomed the opportunity to provide additional resources to assist the TEA in achieving its vision for excellence in education across the state," said Janet Mountain, executive director of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. "Through our work with 10 districts in this state and many others nationwide, we've witnessed performance management in action and seen how timely, relevant information can be used by teachers and administrators to directly influence student achievement and graduation rates."

"We are data rich but we have a dated collection and storage process and system that urgently needs upgrading," said Robert Scott, Texas Commissioner of Education. "The Legislature funded a hardware upgrade, and now the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation planning grant will help us make the most of that upgrade with a roadmap for a performance management system that gathers, analyzes and reports critical information and puts it into the hands of the people who can help drive excellence in schools across our state."

The grant funded by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation will support a plan for the PEIMS revision based on the needs of Texas education stakeholders, the desired outcomes of the performance management system, best practices gleaned from other states and recommendations for the implementation and budget of the system overall. The Dell family foundation has invested about $80 million in Texas education in the past nine years, including significant investments in 10 districts across the state (including the Austin Independent School District, Dallas Independent School District and Houston Independent School District) to fund performance management initiatives, which the foundation believes are critical to bridging the achievement gap in urban schools. Performance management is an approach that fosters a culture dedicated to accountability and collaboration and uses technology to gather, analyze and report information that provides administrators and teachers with timely, relevant insights they can use to make decisions, predict performance levels and graduation rates, and change the course of students at risk. Additional education grants in Texas include funding charter schools that deliver outstanding academic results; college readiness programs like Advanced Placement (AP) Strategies and AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination); the Texas Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Initiative (T-STEM) and the Texas High School Project (THSP).

"Imagine having the wealth of the world trapped in a vault with no way to unlock its capacity to do so much good," said Mountain. "Texas has been a leader in tracking student data for 20 years, and we envision the system upgrade as the key to unleash the potential of that data and empower the Texas education system with timely, pertinent information that informs innovation and decision making in our schools."